The Newsonomics of Small Things

let’s call it the newsonomics of small things, with a nod to Mr. Jobs and to Meinolf Ellers’ realization. Let’s focus on Small Things as opposed to Big Things — meaning traditional advertising and circulation, the long-in-the-tooth double-digit contributors to newspaper company revenues. It ...

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The Newsonomics of Yahoo’s New Livestand

With the launch of Livestand, we see the beginning of Aggregator Wars 2.0, to be fought on a tablet near you. Livestand pushes the question: How are we going to receive news and features via the tablet, through individual apps (paid or free) or through an aggregator? And how are publishers ...

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The Newsonomics of Defense and Offense

It’s the offense that represents a problem. Most pay tests have yielded relatively little new revenue. Digital circulation revenues, if broken out, would be minuscule for most, leaving publishers underwhelmed. While buoyed by the defensive wins, without significant new circulation revenue, ...

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Nine Questions as the NYT’s Pay Fence Gets Ready to Go Global

Is part of the plan a backdoor Sunday paper/digital access new bundle? Three of the people I talked with on the day of the announcement had begun to run the subscribe-to-Sunday, get-free-digital access numbers in their head. At a $4-a-week introductory rate, that’s $208 a year. Which gets you ...

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The Newsonomics of the New York Times Pay Fence

It’s a high price, a gamble, and a big hedge — see Test 5 below — against print subscribers migrating too quickly to the tablet. Since it is not charging print subs, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get non-print people to pay a minimum of $195 a year for something that was free, and it ...

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NYT’s Good Timing on Pay Launch, Amid News Chaos

Here is the growing epiphany about these core readers: Not only do they pay you, they use lots more than the fly-by people, the non-core sent by Google, Facebook, Twitter and all manner of other referrals. More than 50% of the Financial Times traffic comes from about 10% of its unique visitors, ...

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Nine Questions on the Dallas Morning News Pay Plan

How big will the Morning News payoff be? Let's look at the emerging one percent rule here. If the Morning News were to get -- after some period of time -- one percent of its 4-5 million monthly uniques to sign up for a digital-only subscription, and stick, that would be worth $9 million a year. ...

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The Newsonomics of Roll-Up

Once you've clustered -- centralized to the max the administration, circulation, advertising, production, finance and newsroom tasks of all of your own owned properties, you look next door to other companies, for fresh cluster bait. (Wait a minute, wasn't that the plot line in Aliens or The ...

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The Newsonomics of Apple’s/Google’s/Press+’s Pay-for-All

What’s a solution to the mess? Well, there are any number of solutions. Here’s mine: Apple goes ahead and sells digital subscriptions in its store. On revenue shares, it takes 30 percent the first year, 20 percent the second year, 10 percent the third year, and 5 percent each subsequent year ...

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The Newsonomics of Overnight Digital Customers

That’s right. You’re no longer a “user”, a hateful term if ever one were invented, or a “visitor,” or a brother from another digital planet. Overnight, you’re a customer again. In this psychology, a news company has put a value on what it produces. You, the customer, now are being shown that ...

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